I just heard Sheryl Crow’s "If It Makes You Happy" on XM’s Top Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 It reminded me how her new album is a stiff.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it has no HITS!<\/p>\n
Now should Sheryl Crow be castigated for creating no hits?\u00c2\u00a0 Is this a human flaw?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I give her props for making the music she wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 However, I do castigate her for the hype of said record, wherein she said her previous lame album, "C’mon, C’mon", was made under duress, that she capitulated and gave the label what it wanted.<\/p>\n
What does Interscope want?\u00c2\u00a0 HITS!<\/p>\n
You know a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a catchy track.\u00c2\u00a0 That can be used in advertisements, as bumpers on TV, that can be played at the ballpark.<\/p>\n
What blew up the music business was the changed definition of a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, an album track that was spun on FM radio was a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Like "Stairway To Heaven".\u00c2\u00a0 A track that was too long and of too undefined a structure to fit within the AM radio hit paradigm.<\/p>\n
What’s a hit today?<\/p>\n
Something that is on everybody’s hard drive.<\/p>\n
What is on people’s hard drives?\u00c2\u00a0 Oftentimes music that the major label hasn’t even RELEASED!\u00c2\u00a0 Like this duet between Sheryl and the Allman Brothers of "Midnight Rider" I’m listening to at this very moment.<\/p>\n
It’s now about careers.\u00c2\u00a0 Creating a body of work that resonates with the public.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the major label wants HITS!\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you create a hit, you end up turning off the act’s core audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Because usually there hasn’t been a long enough career to cement the band\/fan relationship.<\/p>\n
So, here we see the opposing forces at work.\u00c2\u00a0 The label wants a hit and the act wants to pursue its musical dream.\u00c2\u00a0 You have Clive Davis telling you to work with a song doctor, to add catchy elements, and you wonder what this septuagenarian knows about YOUR music.\u00c2\u00a0 Why HE’S such an expert.<\/p>\n
And by the old standards, very few tracks make it as hits anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Because of the fracturing of society.\u00c2\u00a0 Not enough eyeballs\/ears are exposed to the same stuff on a regular basis.\u00c2\u00a0 I guarantee you TENS OF MILLIONS of people have never heard Mariah Carey’s big hit, "We Belong Together".\u00c2\u00a0 But there wasn’t a soul alive who didn’t hear "Satisfaction" in the summer of ’65.<\/p>\n
Not that Sheryl Crow didn’t promote this new album "Wildflower" like it wasn’t a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 She played the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day game.\u00c2\u00a0 She did incredible rounds of press.\u00c2\u00a0 But obviously it didn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the album didn’t sell.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the people you’re appealing to with this extravaganza of hype only respond to the hit.\u00c2\u00a0 And without a hit, they don’t buy.\u00c2\u00a0 And the true fan…he’s puking.\u00c2\u00a0 As you focus your attention on garnering the attention of people who don’t care while HE was devoted to you.<\/p>\n
Satiate fan devotion.\u00c2\u00a0 Give the fan exactly what he wants.\u00c2\u00a0 More tunes.<\/p>\n
But the label wants FEWER tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 They say it confuses the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they even tell radio WHICH TRACK TO PLAY!\u00c2\u00a0 Sending that track and that track only.<\/p>\n
But, with the fragmented listening landscape, unless you’re on Top Forty, and Top Forty is almost purely urban, you can’t reach enough people to go platinum.\u00c2\u00a0 And thus you didn’t have a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 And thus your label hates you, or ignores you.\u00c2\u00a0 So, why don’t you add a rapper.\u00c2\u00a0 Get one of the hip-hop producers to add beats.\u00c2\u00a0 Play the game why don’t you, we need HITS!<\/p>\n
Hits mean less than ever before.\u00c2\u00a0 And, a traditional hit may not even burnish your career, might even hurt it.\u00c2\u00a0 So, ask yourself, the game the major label wants to play, is it working FOR YOU??<\/p>\n
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I just heard Sheryl Crow’s "If It Makes You Happy" on XM’s Top Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 It reminded me how her new album is a stiff.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it has no HITS! Now should Sheryl Crow be castigated for creating no hits?\u00c2\u00a0 Is this a human flaw?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I give her props for making the music she wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-4K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}